Ling 114_ Semantics _Project 1

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Imogene Ryan
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1 Ling 114_ Semantics _Project 1 Jinxiao Song 1. At first glance, the term that best fits the sentences sounds like: a. I d like a (large/small) amount of cash. b. Here comes a (large/big/small/little) dog. c. The dog let out a (big/small/little) yelp. d. They made a (big/small) mistake. e. What a cute (little) doggie! f. The twins are (big/small) for their age. 2. Factors that might be responsible for the choice of terms. These words are often interchangeable. They are often used in the same situations with similar meanings. Big and large are synonyms. Small and little are also synonyms. However there are different contexts and collocations for each word. 1) Big is used to refer to objects that are large in size, height, width, or amount. While for large, as a synonym of big, it still means big, but it requires the patient to be somewhat bigger than big. It requires the noun to be bigger than people s prototype of the size/quantity of certain categories. Therefore, in sentence b, both large/big dogs are acceptable, because both describe the size of a dog. However, large dog might be even bigger than a big dog. Since people have a prototype of how big a dog can be, large seems to indicate an alien giant dog. Similarly, large twins carry the meaning of bigger than the category of all human twins. 2) The phrase large amount of is often used as a phrase to describe uncountable nouns like money. Big is used both on countable and uncountable nouns. 3) Large can be used to describe both concrete bigger and abstract bigger. Big is used more on concrete objects that interlocutors can refer to. For example, big in size, height, width, number, loudness, power, capacity, etc. This explains sentence f, the size of the twins is what the sentence is talking about. It should be either big or small. 4) Large goes better with abstract things, such as scale, extent, degree, quantity. Big is used more causally and used more often with real events, objects. You won t find a large mistake (but people tend to say a huge mistake ). 1

2 5) Large and big are both antonyms of small. They all talk about size, dimension, and intensity. The fact that each sentence, except for the one modifying doggie, can all bear the usage of small. Small is widely used to refer to things that are either concrete or abstract, over small or medium small, formal small or informal small. 6) Small and little are synonyms, but they are different in terms of speakers attitude. Little is used only on small animals that are likely to be tiny, friendly, cute, and harmless. People do not call a whale little, unless there is a super small whale. Sentence e uses the word doggie, in which the suffix -ie/-y indicates a tiny, fuzzy, cute dog. The same with sentence b, small dog would be just small in size, but little dog is smaller than small, and is more beloved than small things. For sentence c, little yelp sounds like a poor little dog asking for food. 3. The TIME Magazine corpus I focused on the TIME Magazine, 2000s corpus. There are over 3000 sentences for each term, therefore I chose some of the chunks and analyzed the following factors that I did not think of before. 1) Little as an adjective. a) I found that little is not only used for cute tiny animals like monkey, turtle, but also on cute kids, short story, and even tiny buttons, dresses or pills. As in example 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15 (table 1). Some of them are interchangeable with small, as with little voice in example 8. Small voice and little voice usually leaves interlocutors the same idea of a not loud voice. Some are not interchangeable. In little piggy, little bears speaker s emotion and attitude of loving the piggy, but small piggy cannot express this. b) Little is used frequently in the phrase a little to indicate small in duration, as in a little late, in example 9. c) Little indicates small in quantity or amount, scale. Little money is different from small money. The previous one means small in quantity, the later one means small in terms of size. Example from the corpus is bears little resemblance and little contests. As in example 13, 14. d) Used with uncountable nouns. For example a little time. 2

3 e) It has the meaning of younger, as in my little brother. As in example little kid New Hampshire, " get out there on a three- hour walk and you are a little kid again. " # Outdoor enthusiasts can snowshoe wherever there is snow - - on 2 little dress here is comes in forms like a comic riff on the empowering influence of a little black cocktail dress. 3 little boy filing suit to win him asylum. # In the middle is Elian, the little boy plucked from the Atlantic on Thanksgiving Day after the boat carrying him, his 4 little monkey Manaus, Brazil, of biologist Marc van Roosmalen holding a tin can with a little monkey shivering inside. "' Oh, no. Not another one,' 5 little turtle so it will be ready for the next time. " I'm like a little turtle, " she says from her Washington home. " I just bring a 6 little girl hinks that looks perverted, " Patsy says. " JonBenet was an entertainer... Little girls play dress up. " In a comment that didn't make the final 7 little piggy ery partial to pork rinds c) arresting a convention protester d) playing this little piggy went to Chino # 2. Jesse Jackson termed racial diversity at the G.O.P. 8 little, tiny voice months old, spilled something on her new shoe: " She said in a little, tiny, low voice,' Oh sh,' and my husband and 9 a little was exactly how I dreamed it would happen. # I know I'm a little late on the dotcom trend, but the way I see it, I'm 10 little story very good golfer, but he's an even better writer. From a distressing little story about Michael Jordan to some superb explorations of the golfer's soul, there 11 little brother At this late date, I don't want to dwell on my little brother taking my new bike without permission back in What's important is 12 little buttons including one for a hanging cap rack that neatly holds the hats by the little buttons on top. Beck's firm also creates its own line of products, 13 little resemblance Twist was the inspiration for his snarling mafioso character. Never mind that Twistelli bears little resemblance to Twist; if the judgment stands, McFarlane's Image Comics imprint could 14 little contexts " he says. " I like seeing how high they fly. We have little contests where we go out and see who can get the longest hang time on 15 little pill GOOD NEWS # FOOD AND SEX Pfizer's little blue pill may do more than revive a flaccid love life. Viagra could restore Table 1 3

4 2) Small as an adjective Small is a synonym of little when they are used to describe something absolutely small in size, duration, value, degree, intensity. But there are differences: a) Small can be used to compare with others of the same kind. It means some thing is generally physically small. One can say a small elephant to refer to an elephant that is smaller than the normal size. But little elephant has to be absolutely as small as a newly born elephant. Example sentences from the corpus are: 1, 3. b) Young in age. Small in appearance comparing to peers. Thin. As in example 2, 9. c) Small in terms of numbers. Not great numerically. In example 4, 5, 6, 7, d) Of little importance or on a minor scale. Example 12. e) Used with both countable and uncountable nouns. Such as a small amount of money and a small number of friends. 1 Small boat Elian -- whose mother Elizabet, 29, drowned after the capsizing of the small boat in which she, Elian and 12 others had escaped Cuba. 2 Small boy be just as ugly as the political kind -- and just as damaging to a small boy. 3 Small battles she might be a political functionary in the vast Chinese bureaucracy, fighting small battles to achieve obscure goals. 4 Small group of a small group of avant-garde psychotherapists - 5 Small number Volkswagen has a program to train 18 women a year -- admittedly a small number 6 Small (budget) Girlfight's budget was small ($1 million), but the film is having a bigtime impact 7 Small armies hundreds of small private armies recruited by Colombia's druglords 8 Small portion of His hard years make up only a small portion of a story filled with enchanting details. 9 Small ( boy ) Most of them will be too small to have a keyboard 10 Thin and small (for his age) A rubber bullet thwacked into Wael's shin. Thin and small for his age, he reached down and rubbed the stinging wound with one hand 11 Small world It's a Small World. 12 Small Rick Reinert has built a small business called Reha Enterprises buisiness Table 2 3) Large and Big, as adjectives These two are synonyms of each other. They are hard to separate. In a dictionary, big and large are always explanations of each other. Here I would like to put them together 4

5 and talk about what I found from the corpus. They both means more than average size, quantity, degree, intensity, etc. 1 Large study For one thing, although the study was large -- drawing from a pool of 46,355 postmenopausal women This news comes from a large study -- the first of its kind -- published in Human Reproduction, of 56,000 women Big study Two weeks ago, a big study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that a particular pattern of drinking What they didn't know -- but a big study involving 4,740 participants published in the Archives of Neurology showed -- 2 A large company Anne Guepiere works in the Hong Kong office of a large U.S. company that would prefer to remain nameless. Starbucks, the first big U.S. retailer to sign on, will promote its new coffee beans this fall with A big (company) retailer 3 A large man He was a large, good-natured, hardworking man whose competitive heart transcended even his impressive baseball stats. In a first-floor classroom, second-graders were just finishing up a music class when a large man in cream-colored trousers dashed madly toward them, rambling incoherently A big man He's such a big man - - solid as a brick wall and well over 6 ft. - - that he 4 Large stocks But under Clinton, small stocks rose 16.2% a year, vs. 19.4% for large stocks, reports Ibbotson Associates. Big stocks To keep it simple, he says, stick with pairs of big stocks in the same industry and pairs with similar long- term trading histories. 5 Large differential percentage the current differential of 40% to 50% between mid- size and big oil is too large to justify. Big portion Table 3 A big portion of the Mississippi is missing from your cover. However, they are used in different contexts and have different collocations: a) Context is important. Big boss is different from the large boss. The previous one refers to the top guy; the later one refers to a fat guy. b) Big is used for elder in age. Big brother cannot interchange with large brother, which would mean a fat man. c) Large is more commonly used as collocations with the word amount : a large number of, a large amount of, a large audience of, etc. 5

6 d) Big is used more widely than large. More nouns can be modified by big than large. Below I summarized two tables, table 4 notes sentences that can use large, but cannot use big. Table 5 notes sentences that can use big, but were not found interchangeable with large. 1 By and large These are smaller prizes, by and large, but they're up for grabs. 2 At large Government, the media and the public at large were all completely convinced we programmers were too stupid to properly allow for a change 3 A large group of Teachers have the greatest experience with a large group of normal kids. A large audience a large audience of African Americans of A large amount of Table 4 There's a large amount of celebrity dirt in Hollywood Animal, and much of it is rich meant I was able to use a large amount of new, fascinating papers and photographs, including the letters of Stalin 1 A big issue That's why dealing with company stock is a big issue 2 Big picture That's pretty manageable in the big picture 3 Big brother Hello, Big Brother! " 4 A big mess The show's big, all right: a big mess 5 Big eyebrows A little man with big eyebrows 6 Big money It is hard to deny that big money has had a huge influence on politics 7 Big elephant It was like there was a big pink elephant in the room and everyone acted like it wasn't there. Table 5 4. Conclusion o A large/small amount of is a fixed collocation. So for the first sentence, the terms best fits it should be I d like a (large/small) amount of cash o Here comes a (big/small) dog. In the second sentence, four words all fit to describe a dog. But normally, people would choose big/small in this case. Because large dog means something extra big. It is rarely seen. It s not the best choice for a dog. Little dog fits here, but people are more likely to choose doggie instead of dog as in sentence 5 to express a loving attitude. 6

7 o o o o The dog let out a (big/small/little) yelp. Only large is not proper here because big has a wider distribution. It should go better with sound or voice. They made a (big/small) mistake. There were not any evidence of large mistake or little mistake. I put big/small here, but I think the best choice is big, because if one wants to refer to a small mistake, there should be other adverbs and adjectives, such as They just made a small mistake, no big deal. What a cute (little) doggie! As was discussed before, in order to describe the loveliness and cuteness of the dog, the only proper word is little. The twins are (big/small) for their age. Big and large are all found in describing the size of a man in the examples in table 3. However, in the context of describing twins, it is more likely to be comparing these twins with other normal twins. Only big and small are used for size comparation. 7

Primary 5 Flying Grammar Primary SB 05.indd :21

Primary 5 Flying Grammar Primary SB 05.indd :21 Primary 5 Nouns & Adjectives Unit 1 A / An / The 6 Unit 2 Some / Any 10 Unit 3 A lot of / Many / Much / A few / A little 14 Unit 4 My Mine / Their Theirs 18 Review 1 Let s play a board game! 22 Adverbs